This thing called Engineering..

On one side, there are students who love Math but dislike Biology right from high school-they just can’t get those Respiratory and Digestive systems right in the record, and they’ve decided already that their career will have nothing to do with Biology-well yes, like me. Not one teeny weeny bit.

Then there are the others, who want to know how a Harley Davidson works, or how to construct a Burj Al Arab or an Empire State building-why some might even be inspired by Howard Roark-Fountainhead, yeah! And a few others who want to fly planes, or bring out the next best phone into the market, or some such thing!

So what happens to all these kids?

Engineering happens. What else!

Fast forward to post counseling.

Sep 2007: Students are present at the quadrangle, BIT, and I think it was a Mr. Abhishek Subramanyam who was chief guest that day. An IIT grad, who spoke about his engineering life mainly, which was enough to inspire us all- bigtime!

Telecom students headed to 314-I think, and HOD came up to class, and spoke at length about what telecom was about, and what we could expect from the course, and what was expected of us etc. He then wished us luck and walked out.

Engineering had begun.

Sep 2010: We weren’t the naïve freshers anymore. VTU teaches important lessons, right? Oh don’t give that smug expression! We’re better off learning those lessons than not. Agree? Hi-five! Disagree? Well, a matter of perception.

So, ‘twas 3^rd year, and the sweatshirt rage had just caught on. All my fellow classmates, I’m sure you remember all too clearly as to how ‘keen’ we were on getting it done :P

Thanks to a few students who took genuine interest, the designs came up, and the selection was made.

Now, we were in the midst of the ocean of engineering, and we understood all too well the importance of BSCs and Antennas for communication.. So, what better than a tower with a transmitting antenna representing the ‘T’? Nothing was better, or so we thought.

A dish antenna for ‘E’.

Sometimes all the efforts you put on one thing gives you 100% results, sometimes you just remember a fraction of what you’ve studied in the exams, and well though it doesn’t technically happen, I’m just gonna take a hypothetical situation where somebody blanks out completely in the exam hall. So that s like, complete output no insertion loss, and the fraction what you remember, well, the coupling ratio, and the blanking out? Yeah-isolation! Why all this, you ask? How else am I supposed to bring in the directional coupler we’ve used in our design? So a vertically placed Directional Coupler made for the ‘L’.

A landline phone receiver became the ‘C’- I suspect this has no particular significance except for the fact that it was a phone and we’re telecom students. Well, if you’re a telecom student and you know the actual origin, insert it here. For all you other-unsuspecting-guys, buy my story. It at least sounds plausible!

Then comes the ‘O’. And you know, being telecom engineers, connecting the world globally is the main aim. So, Globe/ Earth. Right.

Last, but not the least, ‘M’-Obviously, the mobile phone. Telecom students needn’t go beyond that, so the grey cells weren’t used even a little for this one.

That’s the sweatshirt part.

Here’s to the lectures-I have to mention DSP and Prof NCA here!-which taught us a good deal of the course subject, and a great deal more about life in general, to the last minute record work- I confess, we never learnt to do it beforehand!-and the labs, to the bunking and the fests (this is for all those who attended and so had fun, and those who didn’t attend and ‘so’ had fun :P), to the canteen food savoring- I know you’re thinking, really, ‘savor’? Savor, yes, for lack of a better word.. and to the assignment submissions, internals and of course the end sem exams- VTU taught us a great deal about probability with those question papers-like, the probability of you predicting the probability of a question appearing is almost zero. So why bother!-and a zillion other things. Here’s to some of the achievements we’ve had, to some of the regrets of our doings-or not, to the lessons we’ve learnt and memories we’ve shared.. Cheers.

June 2011: The final semester has ended, and we look back with a mixture of emotions-some good, some bad and some downright inexplicable. Standing at the crossroads of life today, we see where we stood four years ago, a crossroad all too similar, yet so different.. Crossroads are going to be found at frequent bends on the road henceforth, and every crossroad is an unknown path, an adventure perhaps, or the road to hell, but only time will tell!

But be forewarned, there is only one road to heaven, and nine to hell!

Stay Connected \m/

-Sandhya.N

Telecom, BIT(submitted for review for Britannica- if that's what it's still called)